Working It Out Working It Out stars Stephen Collins (Tattinger's) and Jane Curtin (Kate & Allie) as people just out of bad marriages...Working It OutComedy Working It Out stars Stephen Collins (Tattinger's) and Jane Curtin (Kate & Allie) as people just out of bad marriages...1990-09-07

Working It Out stars Stephen Collins (Tattinger’s) and Jane Curtin (Kate & Allie) as people just out of bad marriages who meet and fall in love. As overseen by producer-writer-director Bill Persky (Kate & Allie), the show moves like a Broadway comedy, with long scenes in which Collins and Curtin do nothing but chat, joke, and pitch woo.

It’s wonderful to see a sitcom take things slowly like this. Persky wants us to take our time, to get to know these characters, and we should be grateful.

Still, so far Working It Out isn’t as funny as it ought to be. The repartee needs to be snappier, the punch lines sharper, and Collins’ hair needs to be cut better — it’s distractingly shaggy, as if he were trying to pass as a jowly teenager. Jane Curtin, however, is just about perfect: smart and tart. Perhaps things will liven up more when wry Mary Beth Hurt joins the cast in the second episode as Curtin’s pal. B-